On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 10:15 AM, Mark Lause <markalause at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Regardless of what prayers are in your head or your heart, in every
> real sense, you are asking voters to vote for your club and against
> other clubs, equally whether they are other socialists, independents,
> Democratic or Republican. That's how the votes are counted.
You are making a formalist argument here.
So? By this logic, any candidate contesting the election is also
asking voters to support private property, since elections are held
under the aegis of the US Constitution, which constitution legitimises
private property. So, even if there were only one combined socialist
candidate, you could still criticize that candidate as being "for
private property".
The proper answer to this is that, even though "that's how the votes
are counted", we can *communicate* to people what's "in your head or
your heart". There's such a thing as communicative rationality. Why
should one not use it?
Let's focus on (and rationally communicate) the substantive, instead
of getting caught up in questions solely of form.